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Bristol Conn.

Higley Copper Coins: Connecticut’s Rare, Exciting and Historic Penny

According to the legend of the Higley copper, a Connecticut doctor with a powerful thirst and a copper mine minted the colony’s first copper coins.

Dr. Samuel Higley frequently patronized the local tavern, where a drink cost threepence. So Dr. Higley, who happened to own a copper mine, struck his own three-penny coins. One version of them bore the words, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE.”

The story may be apocryphal, but Dr. Higley did exist. He and his family mined copper, which grew into a major Connecticut industry. And coin collectors believe the homemade Higley copper circulated fairly wildly.

In 2014, a coin collector bought a Higley copper for a half-million dollars.

19th-century drawing of a Higley copper

The Higley Copper

Dr. Samuel Higley, born around 1687 in Simsbury, Conn., attended Yale College for two years and trained as a doctor. He also learned blacksmithing and picked up metallurgical and mining skills. Before his marriage to Abigail Bement in 1719 he taught school.

He is credited with making the first steel in the U.S. colonies. In 1728, he told the Connecticut General Court he had ‘with great pains and cost’ discovered a ‘curious art’ by which he could transmute iron into good steel. Two blacksmiths testified that Higley had come into their shop, asked for a pound or two of iron and said he’d make it into steel. Several days later he brought it back, and the blacksmiths found it ‘good steel,’ the first they’d ever seen.

So the Connecticut General Court gave Higley a 10-year monopoly on steelmaking.

That same year he bought a tract of 143 acres in what is now East Granby and began mining the land. People said the mine had such rich copper that Dr. Higley could walk into it with a pick and simply stab a lump of pure metal. He’d then take it home and strike coins from it.

Connecticut Copper

The Connecticut copper industry, which lasted about two centuries, began in Copper Hill in Simsbury around 1707 and ended in Bristol in 1953. Mines stretched up and down the Connecticut Valley and dotted the surrounding hills. They gave a start to U.S. brass manufacturing, which centered in Waterbury, Conn., the world’s leader in brass production.

Today, little remains of the once-thriving industry. In 1776, revolutionaries turned the mine into a POW camp, and later the state made it into a prison called Newgate. Prisoners nicknamed it Hell. Today, the state operates the Old Newgate Prison as a museum.

Old Newgate Prison, 1910 postcard

Back in the 1730s, copper mines were small-scale operations, and much of the metal ended up in England.

Samuel Higley undoubtedly had help mining his copper. And it isn’t clear if he himself made the steel dies or struck the coins from them.

Making your own coins, as you might suspect, violated the law in the 1730s. John Hull had minted coins in Massachusetts Bay Colony until English authorities shut him down in 1682. But the colonists suffered a shortage of small coins, and the British authorities couldn’t always enforce the law.

The Coins

One version of the Higley copper legend has it that Simsbury’s local tavernkeeper stopped accepting Higley’s threepence after he’d accumulated quite a few of them. Another story says people started complaining the coin wasn’t worth two-and-a-half cents more than the British halfpennies then circulating.

Whatever the story, Higley struck a version of the coin that said, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE,” on one side, and “I AM GOOD COPPER” on the other.

Coin collectors, though, say his local prominence as a businessman and landowner helped establish the value of the Higley coppers. Thousands, mostly dated 1737, circulated in the region.

“It is likely that a large number and a variety of sellers accepted Higley Coppers in transactions for goods and services,” wrote Greg Reynolds in Coin Week. They probably had more stable value than colonial paper money, he wrote.

What Goes ‘Round

All except one have a deer and the numeral three on the tails side. One bears the image of a broad axe with the words, “I CUT MY WAY THROUGH.” Another has the spokes of a wheel and the legend, “THE WHEEL GOES ROUND.”

Four kinds of Higley copper have a hammer on the back, while three have an ax. Some date to 1738 and 1739, after Samuel Higley died at sea while taking a shipment of copper to England. His family may have continued making coins after he died.

Five varieties of the Higley copper are on display at the Connecticut State Library, the Simsbury Historical Society and Connecticut Historical Society. Coin collectors identified two other varieties, and consider them among the rarest and most exciting early American coins.

They have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Even replicas of the Higley coppers go for far more than their original value: One sold for $646.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Al Marder, The Oldest Living Communist Victim of the Red Scare

Al Marder in 2021 attended a ceremony celebrating the return of the Amistad replica to New Haven Harbor. At 99 years old, he had played a big part in bringing the Amistad story to the public’s attention.

He had still served as president of the Amistad Committee at the age of 94. He chaired of Connecticut’s Freedom Trail. And he was one of the last surviving Communists persecuted during the Red Scare of the Cold War Era.

Al Marder at James Hillhouse High School

Al Marder

Marder grew up in New Haven during the Great Depression, the son of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. They ran a small grocery store in a poor neighborhood of African-Americans, Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Italians, Lithuanians and Irish railroad workers.

“As a boy it became very evident to me how people were living and scraping along,“ he recalled in a 2016 interview with The New England Historical Society. “The store was near the railroad yards, and I saw men getting off the cars, looking for work or something to eat. If it snowed, everyone went down to City Hall to get a job shoveling snow…There was the sheriff sitting in the store collecting receipts because my parents couldn’t pay the bills.”

During the desperate years of the Great Depression, many Americans questioned capitalism and turned toward communism as a solution to the country’s despair. Within a decade, America’s communist allies became enemies. Led by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy innocent people were accused of espionage, imprisoned, thrown out of work.

Al Marder was a victim of the anti-communist hysteria. So was another Connecticut resident, Arthur Miller, who compared it to the Salem witch trials in his play The Crucible.

Marder was indicted in 1954 for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. His lawyer, Catherine Roraback, later became famous for arguing the Griswold v. Connecticut trial, which legalized birth control in Connecticut and paved the way for recognition of the right to privacy.

Al Marder, Activist

At James Hillhouse High School, Al Marder got interested in the political ferment that was all around him. Some of his fellow students were Socialists like their parents. Young women wore leather jackets and berets to show their support for the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War.

Al Marder, still active after all these years.

Marder organized a peace council at Hillhouse to discuss politics, and before school he sneaked out of the house to distribute handbills for the New Haven labor movement. The garment workers didn’t really need him, he said, but he leafleted the workers at Sargent’s and New Haven Clock before the 7 a.m. shift.

By 1954 he had graduated from the University of Connecticut, served in Europe during World War II, married, had several small children and become a journeyman printer. He also faced prison, charged with advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

Marder had never abandoned his activism. As a young man he had campaigned successfully for the state to make college accessible to working-class students by offering night school, now Southern Connecticut State University. He organized a scholarship campaign for African-American students at UConn and the first integrated amateur drama club in Connecticut called the Unity Players. He went to meetings of the Wobblies, and told the Shoeleather History Project he met Elizabeth Gurley Flynn several times.

Al Marder also belonged to the Communist Party.

The Trial

The Communist Party of Connecticut didn’t survive the Red Scare. Al Marder got his union card and went to work for Donnelly Bros. in Bristol. He heard that all Connecticut Communists were to be arrested, so he took off for New York and assumed the name Ken Green. That job didn’t last, but he got another one in Stamford. One day he was walking to lunch and heard a woman shouting, “Spies, there are spies here!” She had belonged to the Young Communist League with them as a student. The police picked them up but had no grounds for arrest and released them.

The 1940 Smith Act, however, had made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government. Al Marder was finally arrested and charged under the Smith Act, along with six other New Haven Communists. Police swept them up with 125 other Communists in 11 U.S. cities, including Boston.

Al Marder, 2016

Marder’s task was to find a lawyer. He sent 100 mimeographed letters to lawyers throughout the state and one agreed to take his case. Catherine Roraback was fresh out of Yale Law School. Her uncle, J. Henry Roraback, had controlled the Republican Party in Connecticut.

She was bright, committed and took full advantage of her name, recalled Marder. “Volunteering to be a lawyer for a Communist when the entire country was embroiled in anticommunism — it took courage.”

The trial lasted seven months and made headline news. Marder was acquitted and the cases of the others were thrown out due to insufficient evidence. “They were just ordinary people looking for a better society,” he said. The judge and jury knew they were expected to convict them – but didn’t.

Aftermath

Before the trial began, Marder had gotten a job as a printer in New York City under his assumed name. The night he was acquitted, he got a phone call at home from his old boss who said, “Al, if you need a job come back.”

“He called me in, said ‘I knew who you were from the morning you walked into the place’,” Marder recalled. The FBI had said to fire him. His boss said he couldn’t because he had a union contract, and the only way he could fire him was if he was incompetent during the 90-day probation or if he did something in the shop.

Marder for years worked on the Amistad Committee, bringing to light the story of the slave revolt and the court decision that upheld freedom for the captured Africans. Picture here: the Freedom Schooner Amistad.

Marder wound up working in the horticulture industry, representing growers – and spending the rest of his life working for peace and justice.

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court severely restricted the Smith Act, ruling it violated the U.S. Constitution.

Mary Donohue profiled Marder in her article, “A Life of Conviction” in the Spring 2016 edition of “Connecticut Explored,” the magazine of Connecticut history. To find out how to subscribe, click here.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Freedom Schooner Amistad By Rhvanwinkle, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36402773

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Moses Dunbar, The Other Connecticut Man Hanged in the Revolution

Moses Dunbar was hanged in Hartford, Conn., on March 19, 1777 – and his father, it is believed, offered the hemp for the noose.

One of these is probably Moses Dunbar’s grave.

Moses was 30 years old, widowed, with five children. He had just remarried after his first wife died. As he approached death – ‘the terrible crisis of my earthly fate’ – he was at peace with his God and his conscience and had little doubt of his future happiness.

Before Moses Dunbar died, he wrote out his final words in a small 10-page booklet. He read them to the large crowd assembled for his execution.

Moses Dunbar had close relatives, Stephen and Ruth Graves. The Graves family farm was located a mile or two up the road from East Plymouth, where it is believed his family re-buried his body in the Episcopal cemetery.

In the mid-20^th century, a couple fascinated by colonial homes found the Graves homestead, dismantled it and moved it to New Canaan, Conn. In the process of dismantling, a small booklet 10 pages long was found in the walls. Those papers were the long-lost documents of the last words of Moses Dunbar.

His Life

Moses Dunbar was born June 3, 1746, in Wallingford, Conn., the second of 16 children. A Congregationalist, he married Phebe Jerome. The couple had seven children, but two did not survive.

After much consideration, Phebe and Moses Dunbar joined the king’s army because they did not support the Declaration of Independence. Moses fled to Long Island, where he accepted an offer to become a captain in the king’s army. He later went back to his family in Bristol, where he was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church. He was arrested by local authorities for trying to recruit boys to the king’s army, released, but caught again some time later.

Moses Dunbar was sentenced to the gallows of Trinity Hill in Hartford. It is believed that Dunbar’s father offered the hemp for the noose. In his last days, he wrote his final speech. Dunbar recounted his father’s disliking him in ‘treating him harshly in many instances.’

Moses Dunbar was executed before a large concourse of spectators. His remains were taken to the Ancient Burying ground in Hartford, where he was placed in an unmarked grave. It is believed the family removed his body and brought him to the Episcopal cemetery in East Plymouth, where he was given a pauper’s grave. There are 23 limestone graves in East Church Cemetery, each unmarked.

Moses Dunbar was the only man in Connecticut history executed for treason.

Last Words

The following paragraphs are his last words:

I was born at Wallingford in Connecticut, the 3rd of June, A.D. 1746, being the second of sixteen children, all born to my Father by one wife. My Father, John Dunbar, was born also at Wallingford, and married Temperance Hall of the same place, about the year 1743. I was educated in the business of husbandry. About the year 1760, my father removed himself and family to Waterbury where, May ye 30th, 1764, I was married to Phebe Jearman of Farmington, by whom I have had seven children, five of whom are now living.

The first year of our marriage my wife and I, upon what we thought sufficient and rational motives, declared our conformity to the Church of England, the Rev. Mr. Scovill being a missionary at Waterbury. May 26th, 1770, my honored mother departed this life. She was a woman of much virtue and good reputation, whom I remember with the most honor and gratitude for the good care and affection she continually shewed me.

My joining myself to the Church occasioned a sorrowful breach between my father and me, which was the cause of his never assisting me but very little in gaining a livelihood, likewise it caused him to treat me very harshly in many instances, for which I heartily forgive him as well as my brothers, as I hope pardon from my God and my Saviour for my own offences. I likewise pray God to forgive them through Christ.

“From the time that the present unhappy misunderstanding between Great Britain and the Colonies began, I freely confess I never could reconcile my opinion to the necessity or lawfulness of taking up arms against Great Britain. Having spoken somewhat freely on the subject, I was attacked by a mob of about forty men, very much abused, my life threatened and nearly taken away, by which I was compelled to sign a paper containing many falsehoods. May 26th, 1776, my wife deceased in full hope of future happiness of which I doubt not in the least she is now in possession. The winter preceding this trial had been a time of distress with us, I, my wife and child sick all winter, another of my children had a broken leg, with many other afflictions which I omit relating.

I had now determined if possible to live peacable and give no offence, neither by word nor deed. I made some proposals of that kind to the committee, offering to enter into a voluntary confinement within the limits of a farm, instead of which I was carried to New Haven jail. But the sheriff and jailer both refused to receive me. A few days afterward I was taken again, carried before the Committee and by them ordered to suffer imprisonment during their pleasure not exceeding five months. When I had remained there about fourteen days, the authority of New Haven dismissed me. Finding my life uneasy, and, as I had reason to apprehend, in great danger, I thought it my safest method to flee to Long Island, which I accordingly did.

But having a desire to see my friends and children, and being under engagement of marriage with her [Esther Adams] who is my wife, the banns of marriage having been before published, I returned, and was married. Having a mind to remove my wife and family to Long Island, as a place of safety, I went there the second time, to prepare matters accordingly. When there, I accepted a captain’s warrant for the King’s service in Colonel Fanning’s regiment.

I returned to Connecticut, when I was taken and betrayed by Joseph Smith, and was brought before the authority of Waterbury. They refused to have anything to do with the affair. I was carried to Farmington, before Justice Strong and Justice Whitman, and by them committed to Hartford, where the Superior Court was then sitting. I was tried on Thursday, 23d of January, 1777, for High Treason against the State of Connecticut, by an act passed in October last, being accused of enlisting men for General Howe, and for having a captain’s commission for that purpose. I was adjudged guilty and on the Saturday following was brought to the bar of the court and received sentence of death. The time of my suffering was afterward fixed to be the 19th day of March, 1777.

Which tremendous and awful day now draws near, when I must appear before the Searcher of Hearts to give an account of all things done in my body whether they be good or evil. I shall soon be delivered from all the pains and troubles of this mortal state, and shall be answerable to None but the all-seeing God, who is infinitely just, and knoweth all things. As I am fully persuaded that I depart in a state of peace with God and my own conscience, I can have but little doubt of my future happiness, through the mercy of God and the merits of Jesus Christ. I have sincerely repented of all my sins, examined my heart, prayed earnestly to God for mercy, for the gracious pardon of my manifold and heinous sins, and now resign myself wholly to the disposal of my Heavenly Father, submitting my will to His. From the very bottom of my heart I forgive all enemies and earnestly pray God to forgive them all. Some part of J—-h S—–h’s evidence was false, but I heartily forgive him, and likewise sincerely beg forgiveness of all persons whom I have injured or offended.

Since my sentence I have been visited by sundry worthy ministers of the gospel, who have discoursed and prayed with me, among whom are the Rev. Marsh of Wethersfield, the Rev. Mr. Strong of Hartford, and The Rev. William Viets being my fellow prisoner [on account of practices in favor of the British government], has been indefatigable in affording every possible assistance to prepare me for the terrible crisis of my earthly fate. He administered to me the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the Sunday before I was put to death. To those gentlemen, as well as all others who have shewed me kindness I give my most sincere thanks. I die in the profession and communion of the Church of England. Of my political sentence I leave the readers of these lines to judge. Perhaps it is neither reasonable nor proper that I should declare them in my present situation.

*** I cannot take the last farewell of my countrymen without desiring them to show kindness to my poor widow and children, not reflecting on them concerning the method of my death.

Now I have given you a narrative of all things material concerning my life with that veracity which you are to expect from one who is going to leave the world and appear before the God of truth. My last advice to you is that you, above all other concerns, prepare yourselves, [with God’s assistance], for your future, Eternal state. You will all shortly be as near Eternity as I now am, and will then view both worldly and spiritual things in the same light in which I do now view them. You will then see all wordly things to be but shadows, but vapours, but vanity of vanities, and the things of the Spiritual world to be of importance beyond all description. You will then be sensible that the pleasures of a good conscience, and the happiness of the near prospect of Heaven, infinitely outweighs all the Riches, Pleasure, and Honor of this mean, sinful world.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me, and receive my spirit.

Amen and Amen.
Moses Dunbar.

Hartford, March 18th, A. D., 1777

Moses Dunbar’s Message To His 5 Children

Moses Dunbar wrote the following to his children:

MY CHILDREN. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Learn your Creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the ten commandments and catechism, and go to church as often as you can, and prepare yourselves as soon as you are of a proper age to worthily partake of the Lord’s Supper. I charge you all, never to leave the Church. Read the Bible. Love the Saviour wherever you may be. I am now in Hartford jail condemned to death for high treason against the State of Connecticut. I was thirty years last June, the 14th. God bless you. Remember your Father and Mother and be dutiful to your present mother.

About the author: Thomas Vaughn is vice president of the Plymouth Historical Society and a clock collector. He also has an ongoing passion for local history. You can see the Plymouth Historical Society’s website here and Facebook page here. For a story by Thomas Vaughn about Connecticut clockmaker Eli Terry, click here.

This story about Moses Dunbar was updated in 2023.

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The Rise and Fall of Chauncey Jerome, Connecticut Clockmaker

When he was 12 years old, sometime around 1809, Chauncey Jerome overheard two old men ridiculing clockmaker Eli Terry. Terry had started to make 200 clocks. One old man said Terry would never live to finish them. The other said if he did live, he couldn’t possibly sell so many.

Chauncey Jerome went to work for Eli Terry, and later started his own clockmaking business that sold 200,000 clocks a year.

He was a better inventor than a businessman, and he went from rags to riches back to rags. But along the way, he provided jobs for thousands of people in New England making beautiful, inexpensive clocks.

In his 1860 autobiography, History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, Jerome summarized his achievements. The clockmaking business, he wrote, “has grown from almost nothing to its present dimensions within the last thirty years, and is confined to one of the smallest States in the Union.”

The business, he wrote, “gives employment to thousands of men, occupying some of the largest factories of New England.”

The key to his success: he replaced wooden works with metal.

Tears

Chauncey Jerome was born in Canaan, Conn., on June 10, 1793, to Sarah Noble and Lyman Jerome, a blacksmith, farmer and nailmaker. His father died when he was 11. “The day of his death was a sad one for me, for I knew that I should lose my happy home, and be obliged to leave it to seek work for my support,” he wrote. He left home to work on a farm, and burst into tears when he was alone in the fields because he missed his father and family.

At 14, he was apprenticed to a house carpenter in Torringford, Conn., closer to his mother who lived near Plymouth, Conn. He decided to visit her, and left in the evening so he wouldn’t miss work. He soon regretted it: It was a 20-mile journey, partly through the woods. “I was not the boy to back out,” he wrote.

He served in the army during the War of 1812, married, had a child and went to work for Eli Terry in Plymouth, doing the job he’d dreamed of: making clocks. Terry was the first person to make clocks by machine. He used a water-powered circular saw in his shop, something never seen before in the town.

In 1822 Chauncey Jerome set up shop in Bristol. There he invented the Bronze Looking Glass clock, a tall shelf clock with bronze-looking pillars and stenciling that cost $1 less to make and sold for $2 more.

The Bronze Looking Glass Clock sold so well it brought Bristol a new church in 1831. Chauncey Jerome and his partners paid a third of the church’s cost, and he raised the rest of the money.

Eventually, he outsold every clockmaker in Connecticut. An eight-day clock with a brass movement rather than wood had put the company on the map. Jerome had figured out how to stamp out metal parts from sheet brass.

Across the Sea, In Every Dell

By 1842 he decided to sell his clocks in England. American clocks hadn’t sold well overseas because their wooden movements warped during shipping across the sea. Jerome sent a shipment of one-day clocks to England with two salesmen, who couldn’t persuade anyone to buy the clocks. Finally they prevailed on a storekeeper to take two. The next day, they were gone. The merchant grudgingly agreed to take four more. They too were gone in a day. He ordered 12, then 200, and Chauncey Jerome was in the export business.

Chauncey Jerome sold millions of clocks around the world. A sea captain told him he’d seen one in a house on lonely St. Helena. A missionary brought one to the Sandwich Islands. And travelers to Egypt and Jerusalem reported Chauncey Jerome clock sightings to him.

As late as the 1940s, an English traveler remarked, “In Kentucky, in Indiana, in Illinois, in Missouri, and here in every dell in Arkansas, and in cabins where there was not a chair to sit on, there was sure to be a Connecticut clock.”

In 1844 he opened a factory in New Haven, where he intended to make clock cases. On April 23, 1845, two boys playing with matches behind one of his Bristol factories set it on fire. The fire destroyed seven or eight of his buildings and all of his clockmaking machinery. The insurance only covered a small part of his loss. So he moved his operations to New Haven, and merged with Benedict & Burnham and became known as the New Haven Clock Co.

By 1850, the company was selling hundreds of thousands of clocks every year. Those were heady days for the clockmaker: He was elected mayor of New Haven in 1854. Things went downhill rapidly from there.

Mistakes Were Made

Mistakes were made that cost him his business in 1855. What actually happened and who is at fault is a tangled story, but a merger of his company with a troubled clock company controlled by P.T. Barnum ruined him financially. In his biography, Jerome says he didn’t know about the deal, indicating his son, the company’s secretary, made the mistake. .

Jerome’s nephew, Hiram Camp, took over the company.

Chauncey Jerome was 63 years old and hopelessly ruined. He didn’t have enough savings to support his family for a year. He moved from the beautiful mansion he loved to a rented house in Waterbury next to a new church with a tall steeple. During a snowstorm in January 1856, the steeple toppled over and crashed through his bedroom. He was lucky to survive.

Jerome went to work for wages, in Waterbury, then in Ansonia, Conn., and then near Chicago. He died penniless on April 20, 1868, at 74.

In his autobiography, he wrote,

The ticking of a clock is music to me, and although many of my experiences as a business man have been trying and bitter, I have satisfaction of knowing that I have lived the life of an honest man, and have been of some use to my fellow men.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Clock By JVGJ – Photo taken by JVGJ, personal acquaintance of User:Bunchofgrapes, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=826325.

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Everett Horton Goes Fishing for a Fortune

Everett Horton was a Bristol, Conn., crinoline hoop-maker who liked to go fishing, even on Sunday. He had a problem, though. The Puritanical village condemned the practice.

Fishing poles aren’t easy to hide, so Horton invented a pole of telescoping steel tubes. On March 8, 1887, he received a patent for his fishing pole.

In 1888, Horton walked into a bank and asked to see the manager. The bank manager wasn’t pleased to see him pull his telescoping pole out of his trouser leg. He asked him why he hid a fishing pole in his pants.

“So you can sneak off fishing whenever you like, even on Sunday,” said Horton. He promised the invention would make them both rich. It did.

Horton established the Horton Manufacturing Co. and moved into a three-story brick building on North Main Street. By 1907, the company employed 100 workmen year-round making the famous Bristol steel rods.

Fishing enthusiasts condemn them as horrible things, heavy and inflexible, but they were cheap and popular. By the turn of the century they were the most popular rod in the United States. They sold well into the 1930s, when the company made a range of household items.

Long before that, Everett Horton had sold his interest in the company. The rods still sell on eBay and at flea markets. The company’s advertisements – created by such well-known illustrators as N.C. Wyeth – were printed as art prints. Today. collectors prize them.

With thanks to Casting a Spell: The Bamboo Fly Rod and the American Pursuit of Perfection by George Black. This story was updated in 2022.

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